


Lost in Translation

by snufflesfoot



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Both ignorantly and obliviously pining, Canon Era, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 11:38:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1897599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snufflesfoot/pseuds/snufflesfoot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New languages are tricky things, easy to be mixed up and muddled -- especially when no one seems to know what they're trying to say.  Or, they both want each other and are too dumb to just say it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost in Translation

After some two years, Merlin has long since mastered the skill of translating Arthur (yes it _is_ a language) and it has proven to be useful time and time again.

For example, when Arthur's at a feast and he says "Well, I'm stuffed!" he really wants two more pieces of chicken and more wine, _today_ Merlin.

And when he orders Merlin in front of the princess bride-to-be of the week whose interminable giggles could shatter glass to get her a room right next to his, he really means, "Dear God Merlin, if you don't get her as far away from me as possible, I'll make you muck out the stables for a _month_."

And when he tells Merlin that he's a useless lump and a pathetic excuse for a manservant, he really means to say, "Where would I be without you, my most kind and intelligent friend."

Of course, over the years, Merlin's picked up a quite a few dialects of Arthur's Face, like how a hard expression and a narrow glare mean Merlin better duck because he's going to have an inordinate amount of dirty clothes and boots and maybe even the odd flower pot thrown at his head.  And when he looks tired and frustrated, it means some stupid lord prolonged negotiations long into evening so Merlin, draw me damn bath if you don't want to lose your head.

But with all his knowledge, Arthur still managed to utterly confound him on some rare occasions.  Like that one time, when the lazy prat was late for a council meeting and Merlin was going ballistic, turning the entire castle three times over looking for the arse.

He finally finds him tucked away in his chambers, sprawled on a chair in the corner, sleeping without a care in the world.

After a minute of crazed yells, Merlin thinks Arthur had to have drunk some crazy witch's poison because by God, the boy _would not wake up_ , no matter how many times Merlin shouted in his face and he was actually getting quite desperate, desperate enough to think about pouring a bucket of water over the crown prince's head.

He doesn’t quite know what possessed him, but somehow in the end, Merlin thinks that maybe he could just dress the clotpole without actually having to wake him up.  So Merlin crouches down to undo Arthur's belt, not really wanting to think about how this would probably end disastrously, and catches a whiff of Arthur's impressive stench from the training field and wonders if he should attempt a bath, but then his mind wanders off with the image of a drowsy, wet, and naked Arthur so Merlin firmly puts an end to that train of thought.

After mentally shaking himself, he finally gets the belt undone and is in the process of wriggling Arthur's trousers off when Arthur gives a soft groan and murmurs, " _Merlin_ "

Merlin freezes.  How could Arthur have possibly known...?

He's still pondering when Arthur blearily opens his eyes and blinks in confusion at the kneeling boy before him and says again, voice rough and quiet, "Merlin?"

Arthur then seems really to take in the entire situation, what with himself sprawled across a chair, his pants undone and a ways down his thighs and Merlin's horror struck expression and hands that were still on those very same trousers.

"MERLIN!" Arthur screeches and positively jumps out of the chair; he pulls up his pants and ruffles his shirt down, but keeps a hand over his crotch, haphazardly covering the rapidly rising bulge he really hopes Merlin doesn’t notice, all the while stumbling and shouting strings of curses.  " _What the BLOODY_ \-- "

“You were late!” Merlin cries defensively, scrambling up himself, and then adds, “What’s the matter anyway?  I’ve always dressed you.”

Arthur doesn’t reply, only gets this positively feral look on his face and growls, “Get.  Out.”

Merlin doesn’t wait for a boot in the head; he turns on his heel and scurries out, meeting be damned.  But as he’s racing away from imminent doom, he can’t help but feel that in all the time he has known him, Arthur has never made less sense.

Arthur, for his part, is standing completely still in his chambers, breathing heavily with a horrified look slowly expanding over his face as he thinks about how entirely too close that was.  Because yes, it wasn’t a big deal when Arthur _concentrates_ on it not being a big deal, when he keeps his mind carefully blank whenever Merlin’s fingers brush his chest or skitter over his shoulder.

He rubs his temples as he sinks back down into the chair, still feeling the ghosts of Merlin’s hands over his legs.  Damn the meeting, he thinks, as he slides a hand down to the painful hardness between his legs and finishes what his dream started.

~*~

“ _Mer_ lin,” Arthur whines plaintively.  “I can’t find my white tunic!  That’s my favorite tunic!  Merlin, come find it!”

“Why do you need it now?”  Merlin huffs as he wipes a splat of jam from his face.

There was something going around and half the servants had gone home sick; the cook apparently thought this was specifically Merlin’s fault and had dragged him down to the kitchens to help make jam with the last of the spring blackberries.  By now Merlin had cleaned, crushed, and boiled fruit for three hours and had been contemplating for the last two the sheer absurdness of the amount of jam these people ate; needless to say, Merlin was on his last nerve.

“Because it’s my _favorite_ ,” Arthur reasons, as if that’s the most definitive justification in the world, and Merlin thinks he can almost see Arthur playing hopscotch on that last nerve of his.

“Arthur,” he starts, turning towards the clotpole, but then stops to gape.  “Is – isn’t that what you’re wearing?”

Arthur looks down and a smile breaks over his face.  “Yes!  Thank you Merlin!  I knew I could count on you!”

Merlin gapes some more.

“Are you drunk?”

Arthur giggles – _giggles_ – and swats him on the shoulder.  “Don’t be silly, it’s the middle of the day!”  Then he frowns and cocks his head, as if remembering something.  “Although,” he says slowly, “I did drink that medicine Gaius gave me.  He said a lot of people were getting sick.  He said it was a preti… a preemiv…a ritev –”

“A preemptive action?”

“Yes!” he says, relieved, then pulls a face.  “It was gross.”

“You idiot,” Merlin mutters under his breath.  “You’re supposed to take that before you go to sleep.”

Arthur frowns again.  “Why?”

“Because,” Merlin says slowly, “it makes you sleepy.”

Arthur doesn’t respond, just looks at him with wide eyes. 

Merlin sighs a long suffering sigh as he pours the last of the jam into a jar.  “I’ll take you back to your chambers, let me just wash my hands.”

“ _Mer_ lin,” Arthur says, so very exasperatedly, “you shouldn’t waste food.”  He grabs Merlin’s wrist and brings a hand, sticky with jam, up to his face.  “I love jam,” he states seriously as he proceeds to close his lips around two of Merlin’s fingers.

 _This gaping thing is getting to be too damn much_ , Merlin thinks after another long moment of gaping.  He’s shocked out of his reverie when Arthur presses his tongue to his harder to his fingers and _starts to suck on them_ , complete with hollowed cheeks and Merlin curls his toes and lets out a little whimper against his will, but could you blame him, Arthur _fucking_ Pendragon was sucking _jam_ off his _fingers._

Arthur pulls off after a few seconds that feel like a little eternity and says, oh so nonchalantly, “Well, off to bed then!” and turns away with a gigantic smile on his face, with Merlin, of course, gaping after him.

~*~

The next day, in which Merlin is most definitely not thinking about things concerning jams and fingers and royal tongues, there’s talk buzzing around the courtyard that Arthur’s hunting party met with a nasty group of bandits while coming back, that some may not be coming back.

So Merlin doesn’t think about who will and who won’t be coming back, just grits his teeth and draws a bath and brings up dinner and even a goblet of wine while thinking of nothing at all because of course he’ll come back how could he not and he should of gone with him why didn’t he go _with_ him how could he be so _stupid_.

And when Arthur bursts into his rooms, Merlin barely has time to whirl around and take a deep, much-needed breath because Arthur looks frenzied, restless in his very skin and he takes one look at an innocently dusting Merlin and stalks over, pinning him hard against the adjacent wall and grinds down, his mouth already on Merlin's neck, sucking a bruise into the skin just below his jaw and if Merlin had any protests, they crumble when Arthur begins to nibble on the tip of his earlobe and tugs down Merlin's trousers in one graceless shove and takes him in his hand.  Merlin arches into the touch with a groan as he fumbles with the stubborn clasp of Arthur's belt, finally getting it undone and Arthur rolls his hips against both of them, and Merlin shivers even though Arthur's breath is hot in his ear, whispering his name in a daze.

Later, when Arthur is looking at anything but Merlin, he explains that it was nothing, it was an adrenaline rush from the fight and it's not like he could've asked a maid ( _Translation: I’m too noble for my own good_ ) and you understand, don't you Merlin and Merlin nods vehemently because he does of course, it was nothing, so he just cleans himself up and goes back to work.  Because it was nothing.

~*~

Arthur doesn’t even know why he’s headed this way.  It’s a dreary day and the grounds were muddy so no one much wanted to drudge out and swing swords around so he had told the knights to take the day off and had made sure he didn’t smile too wide when they whooped with delight, he did have appearances to keep up after all.

So what with no training, he had absolutely no reason to go to the armory, but he found himself there anyway, and oh, there was Merlin.

For a while, Arthur can’t help but just stare at him.

He’s sitting on a stool, his legs on either side of it, with his head bent down to the sword he’s polishing.  The only light in the room came from the small fireplace Merlin’s in front of and the sparks glance off the sword and flit around his face, catching the edge of his jaw and the sharp of the cheekbones and the tips of his hair.  But then the light moves as he moves, bending forward and back as he slides an oiled rag up and down the sword with wiry hands, now capable, and Arthur’s only here to see if the numbskull’s not messed up his sword, he’s only here check on him of course.

Merlin gets a feeling, some kind of prickling on the back of his neck, so it comes as no surprise when he looks up from the sword that Arthur’s standing just inside the doorway, leaning against the frame, and it seemed as though Arthur wasn’t all that surprised that Merlin noticed him either; he made no move to break eye contact.  But after a few moments, Arthur abruptly straightens and stalks out the door.  And Merlin follows.

He follows Arthur all the way to his rooms, with his head down but occasionally glancing up to see Arthur’s steady stride faltering more and more as they get closer and closer and Merlin smiles a little because he knows what Arthur wants but the honorable idiot’s probably fretting over how very _indecent_ it was for the crown prince to take advantage of poor helpless servant Merlin but Merlin wonders when Arthur would pull his head out of his arse and realize that poor helpless servant Merlin wasn’t being forced to do anything.

Not to say that there were any feelings involved.  Saying that would be very dangerous indeed.  It was just a…matter of convenience, is what it was.  And that was all.

Merely a matter of convenience when Merlin closes the door to Arthur’s room behind him and when he drops to his knees before Arthur and when he’s making needy little noises in the back of his throat with his lips stretched wide and fingers bruising into Arthur’s hip and when Arthur’s fingers are clamped in his hair, twisting and clenching and trying hard not to buck into Merlin’s mouth and when they’re both trembling at the end.  Just a matter of convenience.

~*~

He’s kind of used to it by now, isn’t fazed at all when Arthur drags him into some dusty alcove after a meeting or pushes him down to his knees before a banquet.  But there was that one time after an especially tedious treaty signing that Arthur pulled him into an empty room and dropped onto _his_ knees and almost gave Merlin a heart attack and when he felt a wet heat envelop him, when he hears utterly obscene noises from below, he had to bite down on a knuckle to keep the moans in and when Arthur got up, he looked so perfectly content between that devilish smile that Merlin almost reverted back to gaping through his shallow breaths.

~*~

It was that time of day when the sun just doesn't _want_ to set and everything was glazed in hues of gold; even the clouds looked like they had been dipped in butterscotch.  The wind whistled a jaunty tune as it rustled through the leaves and ruffled Arthur's hair and even though he was this high up, he could still hear the whines of children as their mothers shepherded them back into the house.

Arthur likes it here.  Even though the stairs are steep and winding and there are quite a lot of them, he always comes here after a long day.  He feels like he can breathe here, like everything on his shoulders just falls away.

Arthur’s brought out of his thoughts of nothing at all when he hears pained, heavy breathing coming from behind him.  He turns just as Merlin emerges into the light from the dusty staircase, doubled over and clutching his side.

Arthur snorts.  “And you call me fat.”

“That’s because you are,” Merlin wheezes.

Arthur glares at him for a bit.  “What do you want, Merlin?” Arthur says flatly, but there’s a hint of amusement behind all his bluster.

“What I want is to know why you insist on climbing to the bloody High Tower every single day.”

“It’s not _every_ day.”

“It’s to torture me, isn’t it?” Merlin continues, nodding, as if he had just had a revelation.  “I must admit, it is kind of ingenious.  You make me walk up here, and almost kill me in the process, and meanwhile, you can just look at the _sky_ and the pretty _trees_.”

Merlin is starting to get more air, and in turn, more cheeky.

“…I walk up here too, you know,” Arthur chuckles.

“Oh, I bet you have someone carry you up, Your _Highness_.”

“Is there a point to your little tirade?” Arthur asks, at this point outright laughing.

“As a matter of fact, there is,” Merlin reveals, finally stopping and smiling a little himself.  “The King wants you at dinner tonight.”

Arthur sighs and takes one last look at the land spread out below him before pushing off the balcony.

“Alright then,” he says, resigning himself to a night of battle stories of near defeats but always victories with a small, crooked smile.  “I’m off.  I’ll see you after dinner, yeah?”

“Of course.  Who else would read the little prince his bedtime stories?” he grins.

“Shut up,” but Arthur’s still smiling, and as he passes Merlin on his way to the stairs, he presses a quick kiss to the corner of his lips and continues on, as if this was an everyday occurrence. 

Which, as Merlin will fervently confirm, is most certainly not.

And as Arthur plods down the stairs, leaving a shell-shocked Merlin in his wake, he slowly realizes, with dawning horror, exactly what he had just done.

~*~

 _They had never kissed before_ – that was the single phrase running through Merlin’s mind.  Incidentally, it started right after it failed to ring true.

All those times ducked under stairwells and pressed against stable doors, there had never been lips involved.  And that was safe – as safe as this could be.  Because even though Merlin will grudgingly admit that he sometimes – _sometimes_ – thinks about kissing Arthur in bed after a long day or for an early morning wank, he never did anything about it.

But now the cabbagehead had gone and messed it all up and it was just a _mistake_ , yes that was it, he probably just tripped and fell against him and didn’t mean it at all, he was just thinking too much into it when there was nothing to even think _about_.

After he manages to convince himself that everything was fine, just _fine_ , Merlin realizes it’s beyond past the end of dinner and he should’ve been at Arthur’s chambers an hour ago.

As he races down the corridors and opens the door with a thud, he sees Arthur sitting at the foot of his bed, knees brought up to his chin and he’s expecting anything but the expression on Arthur’s face – he looked lost.

Well that was new.

Arthur Pendragon never looked lost.  That was just preposterous.  He could look angry, maybe.  Or annoyed, or frustrated, or sardonic (usually all at Merlin), but never just – _lost_ , especially when he looks up and says,

“I thought you weren’t coming,” and he sounds so small and broken Merlin just about loses his breath.

“I thought I ruined everything,” he says, his eyes downcast again.  “Why did you come back Merlin?”

This had turned really inconvenient really fast, because Merlin had just realized there was a terrible ache in his chest from seeing Arthur like this, a leaden feeling to his fingers from where he wants to hold him, hold him and never let go and Merlin doesn’t care now, the very dangerous, scorchingly dangerous things always did feel the best so he crawls into Arthur’s lap and runs a thumb over his cheek, tilting his head and slotting their mouths together and the angle’s weird and his leg’s starting to go numb and it’s exactly right because they’re swallowing each other’s moans and it’s hard and biting and desperate because they were – so so desperate.

And then somehow Arthur drags them both onto the bed and presses him into the pillows, sucking Merlin’s tongue into his mouth while Merlin hazily wonders where their clothes went and then there was no room to wonder, it was just sliding hands on sweat-slick backs and trying to crawl into each other’s skins.

~*~

As Merlin tries to slowly inch out of the bed, the lump under the heap of covers mumbles out something that sounds like " _stay_ " and Merlin almost doesn’t catch the muffled word.

It seemed as though Arthur and Merlin both realized what had been said at the same time; Arthur half sits up and cocks his head with a confused and frankly adorable expression.  Then he catches sight of the goofy smile that had spread itself on Merlin's face and rolls his eyes in that insufferable way of his.

"You're an idiot," Arthur states, reaching for Merlin's hand to drag him back into bed.

Merlin smiles and complies, crawling back under the sheets.

"I love you, too."

**Author's Note:**

> Title stolen from the book _Lost in Translation_ by Nicole Mones.


End file.
